A UNICEF sponsored study on the social and economic status of the muslims in Uttar Pradesh has revealed that even after the eight years of the implementation of the Sacchar committee report the benefits have eluded the muslim community in the state. The study has pointed out the communal violence and subsequent polarization is a big barrier muslim face in accessing the public services like education, health, PDS, MNREGA and those offered by the rural local bodies.
The study titled ``Study report on status of muslims in UP’’, completed in August this year has specifically slammed the political parties for playing up the religious identity of the muslims for mobalising their votes.
``Instead of measures to improve their material condition muslims have routinely been played up by successive governments and token Muslim leaders in most major political parties, on stereotyped issues connected to their faith based identity. Enactment of The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act 1986 diluting the right of maintenance to divorced Muslim women and reversing the Supreme Court’s decision in the famous Shahbano case is a case in point. India’s legal pluralism and the personal laws are constantly used a ruse to rake up and strengthen ill-informed distortions of Islam that are common in India although the same have seen reform in many Muslim countries. This is done with much help from the self-styled Muslim religious leaders by various governments regardless of the ideology of the party in power’’.
In an obvious indictment of the state government the report said `` Development projects for Muslims, central as well as state-led, are rolled out with much fanfare, that are hardly followed through in actions on the ground. And universal programmes for education and health and incomes, hardly ever take into account, the specific barriers Muslims face to accessing those. Rather there is evidence of their active denial in Muslim concentrated pockets. Of course, no affirmative action instruments have been deployed to bring poor Muslims at par, instruments that are working well for other marginalized groups’’.
Communal violence is the biggest hindrance for the poor sections of muslims face in accessing the public services. ``Of late, it is becoming clear that part of the problem of poor provisioning for Muslims has to do with the increasing polarization in society in UP resulting in frontline providers like teachers, panchayat functionaries, health workers, Anganwadi workers municipality functionaries weighing communal considerations in the provision of services’’. The report said `` communal polarization is almost entirely engineered, with actors using a variety of tools, an important one being hate-inspired violence’’.
The importance accorded to UP by the Sacchar committee could be gauzed from the fact that during the 11th five year plan (2007-12) of the total Rs. 3,780.40 crores for the plan period UP share was 27 percent. This money was to be utilized under Multi sectoral development programme (MSDP) formulated by the Center as per the recommendations of the Sachar committee.
The study report noted that `` How Muslims in UP perform - and its corollary, how programs for welfare of Muslims perform in UP – has a significant bearing on overall wellbeing of Muslims in India. This is because of the sheer size of Muslims of UP in the overall size of the Muslim population of the country.
A measure of the size of the muslims population of UP is the number of districts, town and blocks in the state classified as ‘minority concentrated’ by the Sacchar committee. UP accounts for 21 districts out of total 90 district identified in the country as Minority Concentrated Districts (MCD), 72 of the 388 Minority Concentrated Towns (MCT); and 141 of the total 1,228 Minority Concentrated Blocks (MCB) in the country’’. For this reason alone, a study of the socio-economic study of Muslims of UP and tracking and monitoring the working of different programs for welfare of Muslims in the state (universal programmes, such as ICDS, NREGS, PDS et al, as well as minority specific ones – scholarships, credit, MSDP and the like) is an important exercise.
The report concluded that for these and other complex reasons things have not really improved for the Muslims in UP even after implementation of the Sachar committee Recommendations. leave alone making new provisions for the progress of the minority community.
`` UP government failed to utilize even a half of the allocated funds for Minorities during the period 2007-2012. In 2010, the Central government appointed 90 persons to monitor utilization of funds. This was done in response to complaints received from 90 minority-concentrated districts about ineffective implementation and the biased attitude of government officials. Of the 90 monitors only seven were Muslims. UP — the state with largest number of Minority Concentrated Districts got one of these seven. This was the approach of the supposedly secular UPA government’’.